LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - May 1999
WAR IN THE BALKANS
Confederation or explosion
______________________________________________________________
The upsurge of nationalism is threatening to reshape the whole
Balkan peninsula. As the drive towards the establishment of
ethnically homogeneous states gathers force, so does the risk of a
chain reaction and the spread of conflict throughout the region. Is
maintaining existing frontiers compatible with the right to
self-determination?
by CATHERINE SAMARY *
______________________________________________________________
At the Rambouillet conference Jiri Dienstbier, the United Nations
special rapporteur for former Yugoslavia, reaffirmed that the UN
solution to the Yugoslav crisis since 1991 was based on the principle
of the inviolability of frontiers (1). If that principle were
abandoned in the case of Kosovo, he argued, the whole solution would
be called into question. Independence for Kosovo would open the way to
the partition of Bosnia and no one would be able to stop it.
Despite fears that independence for Kosovo would destabilise Albania,
Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, no attempt has been made to involve
any of these states in overall management of the explosive conflict.
The Albanian question was buried at Dayton, as was the question of the
Serbs in the Croatian region of Krajina. For reasons of political
realism the situation in Kosovo, where the Albanian community had been
resisting oppression by Belgrade by non-violent means for ten years,
was passed over in silence - just like the ethnic cleansing of over
300,000 Croatian Serbs in the summer of 1995.
So how was this "principle", postulated as the solution to the
Yugoslav crisis, actually applied? In point of fact the question of
which frontiers were "inviolable" was decided according to shifting
criteria that were never made explicit. The key date of 1991, referred
to by Dienstbier, was when the Slovene and Croatian republics seceded.
From that point on it was the frontiers of the republics, not those of
former Yugoslavia, that were deemed inviolable. So it is quite
reasonable for the Kosovar Albanians to ask why the principle should
not apply to the frontiers of the autonomous provinces too, especially
Kosovo.
The inviolability of frontiers, as a principle, necessarily conflicted
with the right to self-determination. And oppression is the most
radical means of turning a minority into a "nation" claiming that
right - which is why the Yugoslav and Albanian national questions lent
themselves to different answers at different times, according to the
circumstances.
The break between Stalin and Tito in 1948 put paid to the plans for a
Balkan confederation. Yet such a confederation would have provided a
totally different framework for settling the Kosovo question, enabling
the province to maintain its links with both Serbia and Albania.
Albanian-speakers were subjected to domination by Belgrade until the
mid-1960s; then the reins were loosened, but only slightly. The
Serbian constitution of 1974 failed to grant the Kosovar Albanians the
status of a "nation" (narod) that would have entitled them to
self-determination and the establishment of a republic (2).
Granting Kosovo the status of a republic (which it had been claiming
since 1968) would have meant a symbolic recognition of equal rights
and dignity for all inhabitants of the province. It would also have
strengthened rather than weakened Kosovo's ties with Yugoslavia (3),
given the unattractiveness of Albania under Enver Hodja. The failure
of Tito's Yugoslav federation (4), coupled with the social, economic,
political and moral crisis of multinationalism, altered the situation
radically. The bureaucratic confederalism of Yugoslavia prepared the
ground for the transformation of ethno-cultural "nations" into
economic and political entities (5).
The crisis fuelled the resurgence of old and new nationalisms of the
right and the so-called left, and gave new impetus to plans for states
based on exclusive ethno-national principles. The people at the top
set about appropriating territory and wealth in the name of the
"nation". All sorts of criteria were invoked - history, prior
settlement, numerical majority or quite simply "viability" - and all
of them were of course rejected when used by others. Finally, none of
the parties seeking to achieve ethnic homogeneity for populations
demoralised by the crisis stopped short of physical and legal
terrorism (6). National identity was suddenly imposed, whereas under
the Tito regime each citizen had been entitled to choose it freely.
It was ultimately fear rather than hatred that gave nationalism its
mass support. In such uncertainty ordinary people came to fear that
unless they ended up inside the right borders, with the right state
authorities, they could lose jobs, home, land, rights, identity, and
even their lives.
War became an instrument for displacing people in order to change the
ethnic composition of territories (7). In this process a decisive role
was played by the backstage understanding between the Serb and Croat
leaders, who embodied the dominant nationalisms in conflict (8). The
bloody dismemberment of Bosnia, according to a plan reminiscent of the
maps of the Serbo-Croat entente of 1939, was planned jointly by Zagreb
and Belgrade.
Even the Dayton accords in 1995 were partly based on a compromise
between Slobodan Milosevic and his Croatian counterpart, Franjo
Tudjman. Overshadowed by Vukovar and Srebrenica, the Serbs of Krajina
were sacrificed to Zagreb's dream of a Croatia in which the Serbian
population (12% in 1991) had been reduced to less than 5%. A similar
sacrifice was imposed on the Albanian-speaking population of Kosovo:
the status of an autonomous province was revoked, the administration
and public services were purged on ethnic lines, and the prerogatives
of the Albanian bureaucracy were taken over by the Serbian
authorities. And now, a third of the province's population has been
deported.
Blaming all these ethnic cleansing policies and the deaths in all
these wars on the Serbian authorities in order to justify the bombing
of Belgrade - after the event - is to take a one-sided view of history
and select the facts to suit the argument. It rules out any chance of
being listened to by at least part of the Serbian population, which is
vital for the future. And it also strengthens the Croatian authorities
and army, which are not only deeply destabilising factors in the
Croatian-Muslim federation, but also a fundamental obstacle to the
establishment of any new Balkan regional arrangement for cooperation
among the new states (9).
Unlike Tudjman, Milosevic has pressed different buttons in order to
stay in power. In the rump of a federation in which 40% of the
population are not Serbs, he has appealed both to Serb nationalism and
to Yugoslav patriotism. Obviously, his version of Yugoslav patriotism
is a domineering Serbo-Slavism destructive of the former Yugoslavia.
But it is pragmatic and capable of change. Before the Nato bombing
started, Yugoslav society in its Serbo-Montenegrin variant was far
from a homogeneous mass dominated by fascist ideology (10). Then, as
now, it is simply not true that all avenues were explored. Even on the
Kosovo issue there was considerable margin for avoiding the ethnic
dismemberment that is now taking place.
"Serbification" of the province since the abolition of autonomy by
Belgrade had ended in failure. It was that failure that opened the way
for initial negotiations with Ibrahim Rugova in recent months. The
lack of progress in those talks was scarcely worse than in the current
negotiations on the Irish, Cypriot, Palestinian, Kurdish or Basque
issues. The size of the Serbian minority, that was supposed to grow
and consolidate its position, was falling steadily. Apart from a few
families, the great mass of the 200,000 Serbian refugees from Croatia,
on whom Belgrade was counting to overturn the ethnic composition of
the province, refused to settle in Kosovo. They preferred Vojvodina, a
richer province with a Serb majority. Generally speaking, there was no
reason to believe that young Serbs were prepared to die for Kosovo.
In fact two plans were being drawn up on the Serbian side, not one.
The official plan, which was endorsed almost unanimously by the
Serbian National Assembly late last year, was based on autonomy for
the province of Kosovo and restoration of the prerogatives of the
Albanian-speakers, with Kosovo remaining part of Serbia. The other
plan, which was kept under wraps, was the ethnic partition of Kosovo.
The task of international diplomacy was to ensure that the latter plan
never saw the light of day. The choice for the population of Kosovo
was armed struggle for independence or acceptance of a (temporary)
compromise.
No one can say for certain that the ethnic cleansing now taking place
would not have happened anyway. But would it have enjoyed the support
of the Yugoslav population, from which any challenge to the Serbian
regime must necessarily come? If so, why does Belgrade television now
feel obliged to claim that the Albanians are fleeing Nato bombs?
Logic of Rambouillet
From the start of the Yugoslav crisis another approach was possible.
It was still possible at Rambouillet, provided the Western powers gave
up the idea of imposing their own "take-it-or-leave-it" plan in the
direct negotiations between the Serbian authorities and the Kosovo
Albanians. And it must still be tried. But now, as in the past, the
scope of conflict management must be expanded to encompass all the
Balkan states made vulnerable by the crisis. The fear that recognition
of the right to self-determination will chop former Yugoslavia into
smaller and smaller pieces is understandable. But failure to recognise
that right was bound to lead to dismemberment determined solely by
power relations, by the scramble for private appropriation of wealth
and territory, and by the political choices of the great powers.
Moreover, the right to self-determination does not imply a single
solution, especially not the solution of "to each his own ethnic
state". What it does mean is that each community must be able to
choose the political framework which best safeguards its rights. Its
recognition is therefore a prerequisite for remodelling the Balkans on
progressive lines, something that is itself conceivable only as part
of the construction of a democratic Europe. Aspirations for economic
development, a higher standard of living and culture, and equal
treatment are shared by all the peoples of the Balkans - and by the
rest of the world.
There is nothing to prove that the institutional structure that can
best meet these aspirations is a state based on exclusive
ethno-national principles, in the context of small territories
fragmented by war profiteers and traffickers growing fat on political
and economic blockades (11). It is even less obvious that current
policies of rampant privatisation are having any beneficial effect on
the peoples of the region or promoting stability. Nepotism, corruption
and the rapid growth of social inequality on all sides show who is
benefiting from the new regimes that are claiming to defend the
interests of "their" peoples.
In short, ethnic unity is a fiction starkly contradicted by the
cultural gulf between the masses of refugees from poor rural areas and
city dwellers of whatever nationality. It is all the more tragic that
those most vulnerable should be listening to rabble-rousers precisely
because democrat politicians are propounding liberal economic policies
that foster unemployment and insecurity.
Popular aspirations have been the same for the underdogs in all Balkan
communities that, split over various territories, refuse to be treated
as "minorities". Tibor Varady, a Hungarian lawyer from Vojvodina, has
pointed out that the minorities issue is both the source of fragility
throughout the Balkans and the key to peace in the whole region. A
just, and therefore lasting, solution to the region's tangled national
and social questions can be found only if the issue is approached at
the level of the Balkans as a whole. It must be based on mutual
recognition of equal social and cultural rights and the establishment
of new confederal links between states that diminish the importance of
the frontiers which divide their peoples. The time has surely come to
convene a Balkan conference that can at least identify the conditions
for a European aid-based security policy that will encourage the
Balkan states to stabilise their relations with each other and with
the European Union. The right of the displaced populations to return
to their homes can only be secured through a programme of aid for the
whole Balkan region.
A single B-2 bomber costs more than Albania's gross domestic product
over a year. Billions are going up in smoke. Meanwhile, the chances of
a progressive solution to the conflicts in the region, that ultimately
depend on the ability of its peoples to get rid of the leaders who are
the cause of their suffering, are being destroyed. Rather than
boosting those chances, Nato bombs have the opposite effect. Not only
do they kill, they also blind.
* Lecturer at the University of Paris-Dauphine, author of Yugoslavia
dismembered, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1995.
Translated by Barry Smerin
1. Libération, 13-14 February 1999.
(2) The Yugoslav constitution distinguished between "citizens", i.e.
members of the Federal state or a republic, and the constituent
"nations" (narod), defined on ethno-cultural lines. The nations were
endowed with republics, even though these are not ethnically
homogeneous. A second category is "national minorities" (narodnost)
which do not have the right to self-determination, e.g. the Hungarians
and Albanians, because they belong to national groups with states of
their own outside the Yugoslav Federation. The crisis gave rise to
conflicting interpretations of the right to self-determination: was it
the prerogative of states (i.e. the republics) or peoples (split among
several states)? In practice, Serb and Croat independence movements
invoked either of these principles whenever it suited them, while
rejecting the right of others to do so. Thus the Serbian "nation" of
Croatia claimed the right to secede from Croatia, which countered by
invoking its right as a state (whereas Belgrade refused the right of
secession to the Albanians in Kosovo). And both the Croats and Serbs
in Bosnia invoked their rights as a "nation" against the independent
Bosnian state.
(3) On the problems of the development of Kosovo within Yugoslavia,
see the remarkable study by Michel Roux, Les Albanais en Yougoslavie :
minorité nationale, territoire et développement, Maison des sciences
de l'homme, Paris, 1992.
(4) See Catherine Samary, "The dismantling of Yugoslavia", Le Monde
diplomatique in English, November 1998.
(5) Olivier Ladislav Kubli has produced a remarkable book on the
subject, Du nationalisme yougoslave aux nationalismes
post-yougoslaves, L'Harmattan, Paris, 1998.
(6) Among the studies devoted to these issues with major contributions
by authors from former Yugoslavia, special mention should be made of
"Yougoslavie, logiques de l'exclusion", edited by Mirjana Morokvasic,
in Peuples méditerranéens, No. 61 (October-December 1992), and
Radiographie d'un nationalisme : les racines serbes du conflit
yougoslave, edited by Nebojsa Popob, l'Atelier, a fine lesson in clear
thinking by Serbian intellectuals analysing the disastrous results of
Serb nationalism. It would nice to be able to point to a Croatian
equivalent.
(7) Xavier Bougarel (Bosnie, anatomie d'un conflit, La Découverte) has
studied the former neighbourly relations among communities living
alongside each other, inherited from the structures of the Ottoman
Empire, which are still strong in the countryside where the presence
of the various religions is more strongly felt, and their breakdown in
war.
(8) A different kind of understanding was reached with the Slovenian
authorities: Slobodan Milosevic rejected (rather than supported)
intervention by the Yugoslav army in Slovenia, because the Slovene
Milan Kucan refused to combat Serb nationalism and pay for Kosovo.
(9) The current escalation in Kosovo seems to be speeding up the
process of Croatian accession to Nato, an offer made by President
Clinton with considerable financial inducements. With Tudjman's party
in Bosnia calling for the establishment of a "Croatian entity", the US
is getting deeper and deeper into the role of the sorcerer's
apprentice.
(10) The Serbian pseudo-democracy (aptly termed a "democrature," with
its multi-party elections, official and independent trade unions,
women's movements, human rights organisations and anti-war movements)
differed in some respects from the Zagreb variant but had much in
common with it. In both states the far right had been incorporated in
the power structure - in one case in the army and in the other in the
government, and in both cases in the paramilitary militias.
(11) See Nicolas Miletitch, Trafic et crimes dans les Balkans, Presses
Universitaires de France, Paris, 1998.
_________________________________________________________________
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1999 Le Monde diplomatique
<http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1999/05/03samary.html>